ii. All these languages are descended from a common ancestor called the Aryan parent language, Primitive Aryan, or briefly Aryan. Similarly, the languages of each branch may be referred to a common parent called Primitive Keltic, Primitive Italic, Primitive Germanic, etc., as the case may be. Some of the above branches are perhaps to be regarded rather as groups; Indian and Iranian are often classified together as the Indo-Iranian branch; and the common features of Keltic and Italic are such as to render it certain that the two branches were united and shared the same development for a period after their separation from the others; hence we may classify them together as Italo-Keltic; see § 86 ii (2), § 113 i (3), § 147 iv (2), § 203 vii (3).
iii. Our earliest knowledge of the various languages varies widely in point of date, and naturally those of which we possess the most ancient records on the whole bring us nearest the fountain head. But the Baltic group, of which our knowledge is only recent, are of a remarkably archaic character; Lithuanian, whose earliest text is dated 1547, and which has changed comparatively little since, preserves to this day some forms which are practically identical with those which we have to postulate for Primitive Aryan itself.
From the cradle of Aryan speech various tribes migrated at different periods in different directions, establishing themselves in distant lands, in which their speech prevailed, though the aborigines cannot have been exterminated, since the speakers of Aryan languages in historical times belong to many races, and it is still matter of dispute which of these has the best claim to be regarded as representing the original Aryans. The dispersion commenced not earlier than about 2000 b.c. according to Hirt, Die Indogermanen 22. The centre of dispersion is now generally believed to have been somewhere in Europe.
A parent language is not necessarily isolated; analogy rather suggests the contrary. As Latin, which is the parent of the Romance languages, is derived from Aryan and allied to the other Aryan languages, so Aryan itself must be derived from some remote ancestor, and it is improbable that it is the only descendant of it which survived. Sweet, by a comparison of the pronominal and verbal forms of Aryan and Ugrian, has made out a strong case for supposing that the two families are allied; see his History of Language pp. 112 ff. On the other side Moller, in his Semitisch und Indogermanisch i (1907), has compared the consonant sounds of Aryan in detail with those of Semitic, and in KZ. xlii 174 ff. the vowels; and claims to have proved their derivation from a common source. But none of these affinities can yet be regarded as established.
